MEGALOMANIAC. five hargreeves [2]

prologue. help me

warning: sexual harassment, panic attacks

NOVEMBER 24 1963,
one day before the apocalypse

Eight never meant to kill him.

Stupid thought. Totally stupid thought. Eight slumped into the ground, leaned forward, and placed her head in her hands. Her lower lip trembled as she struggled to blink back the tears before they dripped down her cheeks.

"Five?" she tried calling out once again, desperately clawing to the idea that he was just somewhere around, desperately trying to look for her as well. She ignored the dead body, looking around the dark alleyway, trying to find someone. Anyone. "Vanya... Ben..." It was like a cork floating in a bottle of words. Each time she went to pour, the cork jammed down her throat.

Eight rubbed at her chest, trying to ease the ache in her heart, and gulped for air. It was so hard to breathe. Not to mention that there was a dead body in front of her, his head violently exploded, and a pool of blood forming on the ground. The only thing Eight meant to do was to seriously injure him... she never wanted to kill him.

She wasn't even wearing a short skirt or a revealing blouse. Hell, she wore a fucking vest over her clothes and her legs were covered with high socks, the standard academy uniform. The girl was hidden under all those layers of clothes, so unless the pervert she encountered had some sort of magic vision, there was nothing to see.

And she was in the body of a fucking thirteen-year-old. So the moment she fell out of the blue vortex, she had no idea what triggered the event that had just happened.

Which was this.

Eight fell out of the blue vortex, the hand she was desperately clinging on vanishing into thin air. When she landed on the cold hard pavement, the feeling of those calloused fingers no longer gripped hers.

"Vanya?" she called out into the blue vortex, watching helplessly as it shrunk. "Ben? Klaus? Allison? Five?"

No. No. No. Fuck- this cannot be happening right now. This day cannot get any worse. No fucking way.

A voice calls out for her, but combined with the millions of voices screaming inside her head at the moment, she doesn't look at whoever it was as she walks forwards and into the street where she stares blankly at the people who passed by in front of her.

The blood pounded in her ears. Her heart thudded in her chest. Her hands shook. Her feet tingled. Her vision was disfigured as if she were looking through a fish-eye lens. But despite this, she could make out the clothes people were wearing: drainpipe jeans and capri pants, plaid button-down shirts worn with slim blue jeans: she was in the sixties.

Eight had to get away. She couldn't stay near that damned alley any longer. She couldn't look at it. She needed to find Vanya. Allison, anyone.

As she hurried down the streets, Eight tried blinking rapidly in an attempt to get rid of the tears. The logical side of her brain was fighting for her to take over anything, but it was no use. A million voices were screaming at her inside her own head, taunting her, cursing her, and even as she tightly clasped her arms against the side of her ears, nothing was working.

"Stop it," she whispered, hoping the voices would just magically disappear. "Stop it. Please."

The next thing she knew, a hand had sneaked its way around her waist, resting it on her hip, and pulled her over into the nearest dark alley.